A University research project was recently ranked first from over 1,000 EU research proposals from all disciplines in the Marie Curie strand of the EU’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7).

The Auto Game Design project, directed by Prof. Georgios Yannakakis of the Institute of Digital Games, aims to investigate how machines can automatically design complete playable games that are novel and surprising to humans.

It will also investigate the relationship between human and computational creativity, placing Malta in a prominent position on the world map of research into computational creativity.

The project is not the institute’s only success, which has secured around a million euros for the development of game research in Malta over the past year.

The institute is currently involved in four EU-funded pro-jects in the areas of game artificial intelligence and game design, participating as a partner in two ICT projects (C2Learn, iLearnRW) and leading two Marie Curie projects (Auto Game Design, Reflect) around the areas of game artificial intelligence and game design. C2Learn is investigating the design of games that foster the creativity of students while iLearnRW seeks to assist students with learning difficulties such as dyslexia.

Games developed from these projects are planned to be tested in Maltese classrooms across the country during 2015 and are expected to have an immediate impact on current pedagogical approaches with respect to both creativity and dyslexia.

Prof. Yannakakis said: “It has been the ideal start for my team and the institute; securing the re­search funds allowed us to hire internationally-renowned people in the areas of game artificial intelligence and game design and boost the impact of the institute’s research internationally. The benefits of this effort are already visible as both the games we develop and the algorithms we introduce have been receiving several awards in top-notch conferences and competitions in the area.”

http://game.edu.mt

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